Before making Shrewsbury biscuits, I’d only tasted caraway seeds in rye bread. I couldn’t believe how well the caraway worked in these Shrewsbury biscuits. It gave the cookies a bit of an anise flavor. Not all Shrewsbury biscuit recipes call for caraway seeds and you could leave them out, but I urge you to give them as try as they are what separates these cookies from the butter cookie masses.

Mace is extremely similar to nutmeg (it even comes from the same plant). However, mace has a stronger, more peppery taste. You could make these cookies with nutmeg, but I strongly recommend baking them with mace.

There is just enough lemon zest in the Shrewsbury biscuit recipe to brighten up the flavor without making the Shrewsbury biscuits taste like lemon cookies.

I baked Shrewsbury biscuits in preparation for the Downton Abbey premiere of Season 4 in the U.S. on January 5. Shrewsbury is not only a British town, but it is also the name of the town right next to mine here in Missouri. Clearly, I was destined to bake Shrewsbury biscuits. I also created sticky toffee pudding cupcakes for the occasion (you can see them in the background of the photo above).

Shrewsbury Biscuit Recipe

My recipe for Shrewsbury biscuits is an adaptation of a recipe from the captivating site, The Cookbook of Unknown Ladies. The Cookbook of Unknown Ladies explores recipes from a book of the same name. That book is “a manuscript recipe book in the collections of Westminster City Archives. The recipes, recorded in several different hands, span 150 years of British cookery, providing a fascinating insight into culinary craft of the Georgian and Regency periods.” I also used a post on Shrewsbury biscuits from Mouthful of Paradise as inspiration.